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The problem with separating Gameplay from Story

Navel Slam·9/5/2014, 6:06:16 PM·29 votes·1,834 views

Recently, as we ALLLL know by now, I mean just look at all the thread dedicated to it, Riot announced that they're going to remove the Institute of War! Now this in and of itself isn't immediately a bad thing. I mean it could go horribly, terribly wrong like so many other things, but there's still a chance for potential, or rather there was a chance.

When I first heard about this my initial reaction was anger, because "Oh god they're going to fuck up the lore again?" I've been around for awhile, I've seen the debacles of Warwick and Soraka (Of which Singed's lore STILL references Warwick as that old potions master). I've seen the changes to Katarina, and the changes to numerous champions in the Freljord debacle. From Olaf to Udyr, to Trundle. I've managed to become accustomed to some of this, for example while I still prefer Trundle's old lore, his new lore at least isn't bad. I do however, despise Olaf's new lore, but that's another topic altogether. Getting back on topic the thing that really, truly worries me about the statements Riot's been making, is that they intend to keep story and gameplay separate....and you can't do that.

I want to give Riot a chance with this retcon, they might possibly deliver, I want to believe that they can do it...but if they insist on keeping gameplay and story in separate rooms, that's going to be nigh impossible to pull off. ALLOW ME TO EXPLAIN.

It is possible for a game to be a good, fun game, with little to no story, case in point. Contra. Contra barely had any story and it's still fun as crap. Street Fighter supposedly has this complex rich story between all its characters, but you would never actually realize that playing most of the games, and the games are still a fun party. However, this street does not go both ways. A story in a video game, is heavily reliant...on the video game. Think of games that had some of the best stories: Silent Hill 2, Mass Effect (1 and/or 2), Bastion, just as three examples. One of the things they all have in common, is that story is heavily tied into gameplay. The best video game stories don't forcibly keep gameplay and story apart, but merge them, meld them together. I used to count League of Legends on the list of 'GAMES THAT MELD STORY TO GAMEPLAY' but I can't do that here. Now, I know, I know I'm being a bit hard on them, maybe the WILL explain it in the new lore, right, right?

To an extent the gameplay and story will be separate. They're not totally separate, (for instance, Darius will always feel like Darius no matter where you see him, and the maps will always be evocative of actual places within the world) but there won't be an in-story justification for five unrelated champions tearing each other apart in the game over and over.

Carnival J - about 21 hours ago

Wrong as it turns out, they AREN'T going to explain it. Unfortunately they don't seem to realize that this isn't exactly something you can go halfsies on. Darius isn't gonna feel like Darius (from a story perspective) if he is fighting alongside Lux, Garen, Jarvan, and Galio, against Swain, Talon, Katarina, Draven, and LeBlanc, because it will be completely nonsensical. Situations like that will flat out, create a massive dissonance. In fact, as much as this word gets thrown around in gaming communities, the gameplay as it is will in fact create a MASSIVE ludo-narrative dissonance. How are the characters supposed to feel like themselves, if they're fighting alongside people they would never fight alongside? If they're fighting against people they shouldn't be fighting against? In such cases you're TELLING us one thing, but SHOWING another, you're not just violating the rules of "show don't tell" you're outright picking them up, and slapping us across the face with them!

I've got an alternative solution to just abolishing the Institute of War. Instead of abolishing it, nerf it, retcon its history so it's not as powerful. Instead of being a conglomerate of mages that's so powerful that they could bring any if not every city-state to its knees...they're just a very powerful group. If it came to outright conflict with say one of the two major powers, they might be able to hold their own, but it's iffy on whether or not they'd actually be able to win, although defeating them would in fact be costly. Maybe instead of just going, "Look you assholes you're fighting here now kapeesh?" They spent time gathering evidence of the distortions and damage to the world the constant warfare was causing, took it around and showed all this evidence to major leaders of the city-states, and then went. "So, now that you know that, know this. WE need to bring a stop to this warfare, we have an alternative solution to solving such conflicts, but if you refuse we will do our damnedest to see you crushed, if that means allying with your enemies so that the wars will stop, so be it." In this case, Demacia and Noxus would have the stand off of not knowing which of them the Institute would ally with, and not wanting to take the risk....so they agree to join.

  • With the two major powers agreeing to at least try this new method, that would bring along Piltover and Zaun, and then history can proceed as it did from there, with the creating of the Freljord city state, and the Ionia-Noxus wars. More importantly, both Demacia and Noxus would be under there sort of by duress. The Demacians would likely try to keep to this honorably, and maybe even quite like the methods by which this works. After all it's honorable straight up combat, with no real way to cheat. The Noxians though might be more under duress, maybe they're also encouraging their champions, like say sneaky ones like Talon or LeBlanc to use their positions to study the summoners, to explore the Institute, probe for weaknesses and flaws, that they can eventually use to bring the Institute crumbling down, before it can ally against them with Demacia. Now for explanations like what happened at...I think the town was called Kalamanda(I'm TERRIBLE with names)? Maybe the Institute didn't do it alone, OR it was like the most that they could do, it was one of the most powerful things they had and seriously drained their resources to do, or they had help, say they were using their powerful magical energies to power a hextech device from Piltover or Zaun, but not something they themselves directly had or could do on their own. Wow, suddenly the Institute went from super powerful and too restricting on the setting for the NOxians to so much as sneeze at the Demacians....to a setting where a group of mages desperate to keep the world safe are doing everything they can, up to and including playing Demacia and Noxus against each other, to keep either one from trying to crush the Institute and just continuing to go about their warlike, destructive ways.

I would also propose one other change, which is how summoners work. Instead of summoning them and basically controlling the champion like a meat puppet, they guide them. The summoner has the advantage of being able to communicate directly with the summoned champion, and can look all over the map and see what other allied champions see, something the champion can't do. Thus it's in the champion's best interests to follow the orders the summoner gives, instead of a summoner controlling one champ absolutely, it's the summoner trying to guide and advise the champion as they pursue objectives, giving them advice on where to go. In this case, the player would be both Summoner and champion. The champion would be the one choosing when to use abilities, (although the Summoner might go, "wait no turn around, LeBlanc is fleeing towards you at low health, use your ult on her!"), and the summoners would dictate where they would go, like generals commanding troops. Suddenly the champions aren't meat puppets anymore, but people gladiators being summoned and then ordered and advised on the battlefield via magical radio communications!

So that's my two cents on the matter, an alternative solution to just removing the Institute outright, and an explanation that maybe, just maybe, Riot shouldn't be dumb and try to separate story from gameplay, because if they really go ahead with what Carnival J said, then they've basically just made their story just a few small steps above Dota's story.

Oh also, for people who are talking about how it just never made sense for some champion's to join the League. I challenge you, I can explain the reason for every champion ever, with the exceptions of Olaf and Lissandra (Two champions I hate, one for what was done to him, and the other for just flat out being a poor fit storywise for the League.).

12 Comments

Sneak Dog9/5/2014, 7:00:12 PM16 votes

The games with the strongest lores were in my experience the ones that blended the lore into the gameplay. The current plan seems to do the opposite. Make the lore entirely distached from the game and just make it this thing that's on the website and pops up every now and then on the client (just like the old JoJ, save for the part where the game made sense in that lore). It feels like they couldn't (didn't want to?) do lore immersively enough and are now going for a simple version of lore in which generic factions are conflicting with eachother and focus on the champions joining these conflicts. (Yes, these are very basic generic factions fighting eachother, the Institute was the most unique faction.)

I'm not complaining about this new direction though save for the replacal of already one character in this process: Trundle. If they redo his voice-overs and change how he did the things he did in his background I'm fine with the new lore direction. It could've been better but it's fine. (I'm not going into a discussion of why I think the things of Trundle in this thread, there's more relevant threads for that) The new direction will make making new lore a lot easier because the lore isn't as complicated anymore. There's less rules to abide to for the factions.

I do not think it is fair to the playerbase to go replacing characters in the retconning. Place them in new settings, that's fine, but replacing characters is possibly the worst thing an ongoing story can do in my eyes (if they die in the story that's ok, but if you just arbitrarily remove them, no).

Godwyn9/5/2014, 8:01:40 PM7 votes

And this post shows why so many are so angry. Its not just what they are doing, but how they are going about communicating it. The devblog post claims they have been thinking about it for some time and that their decision was the only/best way to proceed. But providing no real information. More and more posts keep appearing with other options, many maintaining the current lore with only minor changes at most, were these considered at all? They say they looked at other options before deciding on the massive change they are going to do, but we, the player base, have seen nothing in a long time.

Where has the communication been? If they could show us a sample of their vision going forward, give us something we could connect to and believe in, many would be less upset. But their random retcons and changes of character lore already have a lot of us worried and doubting there ability to make something better.

Zhugan9/5/2014, 9:10:01 PM3 votes

They were already building up to Demacia and Noxus going to war with the IoW with events at the end of the JoJ. If they want to remove (or significantly weaken the IoW) and then go about making smaller changes that would be the ideal way to do it. Not just delete it from ever having existed.

Doesn't take a genius to figure out that actually expanding the lore (instead of destroying large parts of it via retcons) is a better approach to lore on the whole.

Hinagiku339/7/2014, 11:03:08 PM2 votes

I went to Barnes and Noble today. I was in the sci-fi section...and I noticed that there are like 12 Halo novels that all fit into the same canon as the game while expanding on the setting and characters/factions. Right on the same two shelves were Assassin's Creed novels, Mass Effect novels, Star Wars expanded universe, Gears of War, Dragon Age, and a ton of other stuff.

Riot is losing the freakin' Halo at setting lore.

The entire point of lore is to explain everything in the game and expanded upon it. You can expect the Covenant to use the same weapons and troop types in the novels that you would see in the game. The Mass Effect novels use the same mass effect technology that is used to justify everything in the games. The only time this isn't true is for big crossover games, and even then a lot do try to make things fit and make sense.

If the game is non-canon nonsense then why am I supposed to care about Opeli's fanfics or whatever Riot insists they'll totally release sometime? Why not just ask permission and make Master Chief a champion? le sigh

ploki1229/6/2014, 4:58:53 AM1 votes

Honestly, I'll have to call bullshit on this. LoL wouldn't be the first game to have the game not follow Lore as-is. A notable example would be the whole Warcraft + WoW series. There are peasants asking people to go kill certain monsters over and over in the books, and a lot of other things are either impossible or simply ridiculous to imagine.

Then, you can go with other ones like Star Wars/Star Trek. Do you believe that everything said in their games is canon? Following that, the world must be chaotic, because Chewbacca died at least 16 times in my game of Battlefront. Heck, even the movies don't exactly follow the books. Why? Because the movies/games are made to be entertaining while the books/Lore is made to be enticing and more complex. There are things you can create in books that just can't work in a game (It would make certain champion select chaotic because of alingments/infatuation/background/etc.). Just imagine playing as Nautilus in his real size, you would probably chunk Baron's head off in a single swing.

No one gives a shit that it's not the real Malfurion playing Hearthstone, why do you care if it's not the real Graves you're playing? If you wanna play a fun game, play League of Legends, if you wanna have a blast discovering a mighty universe, read the Lore about it. Sure, some things won't work 1:1 betwen the Lore and the game, but that's life.

Ark Angel HFB9/7/2014, 2:53:46 PM1 votes

I can only upvote this once... but that didn't stop me from trying to upvote it a shit ton

Steelflame9/7/2014, 11:08:35 PM1 votes

Also, on the topic of why two groups of "like" champions might fight (Say having two groups of Noxians against eachother), or enemies teaming up... Effectively, a story like what FEZ used. Two city-states got into a battle, but recruited people instead of just using their own (exlcusively) (So for example, Zaun might have 4 Noxain champions on "loan" from Noxus for a fight, and Bilgewater, their opponent, might have another 2 on loan for the fight. Two groups of Noxians would end up fighting one another, and in their eyes, all it is is just a practice scrimmage that is worth money to them, or the city-state borrowing them now owes their original one a favor, for example. Suddenly, a lore-friendly way Kata and Garen, Lucian and Thresh, or Jayce and Viktor might actually end up on the same team, or why Jarvan and Garen, Karma and Yi, or Udyr and Lee Sin might end up fighting one another.

League has enough individual factions within itself that no combination of champions is impossible for these teams under the "loan" system. Between the SI, Noxus, Demacia, Bandle City, Piltover, Zaun, Shurima, Ionia, and Bilgewater (I don't think the Void is a faction that would be represented by the League, personally. More free-lance group style like Zyra or old Skarner would have been considered).

MadDash139/8/2014, 5:42:01 AM1 votes

I really hope that they aren't going to go through with all getting rid of the Institute of War, I mean that is what fuels my love for this game so much. For me, this game is a interactive story, that plays out all the time differently. I mean one of the things I used to thrive off was when I was Rengar going against a Kha'ZIx and the special Easter Egg behind it. i also highly enjoyed the rivalry between Yasuo and Riven(As Yasuo is my main and i absolutely love everything about him). To sum up my ranting, the one thing i loved the Institute of War was the the theories from popular youtuber, Redmercy. Those theories are not essentially real but they just make you imagine the game so much differently outside just playing a game where you fight to the death, it adds so much more spice to it. The whole point of his theories are to one, entertain, and two, make the creativity behind the game a little more interesting and make it just that much better than any other game that I have played.

 So please Riot, keep the Institute of War for imagination sake and how much work you guys put into it, leave it for people that want to make interesting theories and use the contents of it to make the game so much more interesting. Thank you for whoever takes the time to read this.
Kobold9/5/2014, 8:23:31 PM1 votes

As i have been posting on twitter League will have less lore gameplay wise than Mortal Kombat, As in Why are they fighting? MK tells you right off the bat, Hell even Dota is a fight between Radiant (Nature and Life) and Dire (Death and Corruption), in league its just Blue versus Purple (soon to be Red)

AlbireoAzure9/6/2014, 3:16:10 AM1 votes

For me is essential to have lore and gameplay tied together, even if the link is very weak, they can simply make like hearthstone, where is just people playing a card game about heroes of warcraft, don't ask me why (because i don't know) i like more playing a game about playing a game than just playing a game only for the mechanics.

sorry for my bad english

Cloud Potato9/6/2014, 3:29:46 AM1 votes

I used to count League of Legends on the list of 'GAMES THAT MELD STORY TO GAMEPLAY' but I can't do that here.

I have never, ever felt this way at all. The majority of the lore was always outside of the game. Freljord was a mostly outside of the game development. The backstory of why the League exists has never been properly demonstrated in game. Champion lore has mostly consisted of walls of text outside of the game, with one important exception. The champions have been the only thing that has shown League's story in-game, and over time Riot has expanded this by having champion interactions and extra voice lines for things like item purchases.

The most important lore developments that have happened has been new maps, which expand the backstory, but I shouldn't have to say why this isn't a sustainable practice. Lissandra's monologue for waiting after the end of a Howling Abyss game is pretty awesome, but in the end you're hearing it after the game is over. What we do in game has no real bearing on the plot of the League world, and the League world has no bearing on what happens in game beyond establishing why we're here.

If you think that the 'why we're here' is important, I can understand that. But Riot's lore department wants to deliver a lot more lore, but can't find a good way to do that in game, which isn't something that's easy by any means. To be honest I was actually expecting them to try doing so, which is what I thought was the reason behind the lore's lack of action lately. Separating the game from the lore is not what I was expecting, but it makes sense. There is no current foundation for storytelling in the game, so it's a neutral change there, and by not caring about tying in the story to the game it lifts restrictions on what stories they can tell.

What I would like is for a new reason for the game to exist to turn up. Hopefully something that makes more sense than what we have now. But in the end, we get more lore, and that's what a lot of people want. It's not hard to type up a bunch of walls of text to tell a story, but translating that into a game is much more difficult. In terms of what I expect for a melding of story and gameplay, the backstory wasn't very good at it, and champion bios, JoJ, and heck even the Freljord 'event' were all insufficient for this. The champions themselves have always been the best representation for story in the game for me, and I don't expect that to change.